Michael Leunig quotes

Michael Leunig

"All good art is seditious, but the people in authority can never recognise it. I think when you mention sedition, artists are the ones whose eyes light up thinking, 'Oh, yes, I want some of that!'"
Michael Leunig
Good Eyes Art You
"I just happen to believe that what's at stake in the early child's development is so vital and so important, and I think it is founded in the main, in the broad cultural sense, on the relationship between the mother and child."
Michael Leunig
Relationship Believe Think Important
"To live in the midst of suffering, which we do, we do, amid distress, and to keep some equilibrium in the midst of that - that would be happiness enough."
Michael Leunig
Happiness Suffering Enough Live
"It's terrible the way words get attached to you like barnacles."
Michael Leunig
You Way Words Like
"How many times have I heard people say, 'I became very ill a couple of years ago; it got very serious, and I look back and give thanks for how it changed me and the truth I found.'"
Michael Leunig
Truth Me People Look
"We may lose our memory as we get older, but this might not be such a bad thing - who wants to drag a mental junkyard around at a time of life when you're starting to grow interesting little wings?"
Michael Leunig
Life You Time Memory
"I had many good teachers, but only three of them were school teachers."
Michael Leunig
Good School Three Only
"I don't like to brag, but I must tell you that I am regarded in some circles as being in the upper echelons of the elite loony left."
Michael Leunig
You I Am Like Must
"At the age of nine, I simultaneously fell in love with two Dutch sisters because they seemed so beautifully strange, and their clothes were mysterious and alluring - added to which, they could not speak a word of English. More than anything, I wanted to connect with them and embark on a vast journey of exploration."
Michael Leunig
Love Journey Age Speak
"As we grow, we lift our gaze higher and higher, and then sometimes we are brought to our knees, but all is not lost; what we find on the ground can be very valuable and precisely what we need."
Michael Leunig
Grow Sometimes Lost Find
"I think melancholy is part of the natural condition, you know. Anyway, I think it's the artist's function to have their melancholy and not hide it, you see."
Michael Leunig
You Think See Hide
"As a child, I dreamed that my bed could fly and glide and swoop and hover high over the countryside near my home while, snug and secure, I looked down in wonder at the great carpet of life that seemed so perfect beneath me."
Michael Leunig
Life Me Great Home
"Every child is a greedy child, I think. I mean, it's healthy to be a greedy child."
Michael Leunig
Think Greedy Mean Child
"I'm totally deaf in my right ear, yeah."
Michael Leunig
Deaf Right Ear Yeah
"Art, like religion, arises from the spirit, but alas, the formalizing of spiritual life all too often ends in hypocrisy."
Michael Leunig
Life Art Religion Spiritual
"Easter is reflecting upon suffering for one thing, but it also reflects upon Jesus and his non compliance in the face of great authority where he holds to his truth - so there's two stories there."
Michael Leunig
Truth Great Face Suffering
"Today, people call each other 'guys' - this derives from Guy Fawkes, the bomb-making terrorist. No greater tribute has ever been paid to anyone in the history of politics."
Michael Leunig
Politics Today History People
"An education system suits some more than others. It can lead you out into life or lead you on a wild goose chase. It can help to make you miserable, or dull and nasty and insipid, or profoundly stupid in the special way that 'brainy' people can be."
Michael Leunig
Life Education You People
"Who can protest alone? Who dares rise up? It is not easy. One is all alone, and evermore shall be so."
Michael Leunig
Alone Rise Who Easy
"Fogs are like dreams that feed the soul, and without their mysterious embrace, childhood, courtship, poetry and the composition of music become all the more difficult."
Michael Leunig
Dreams Music Poetry Soul
"I am probably not alone in sensing above me the huge corporations and monstrous banks, science, politics and technologies, spy satellites and stock markets, military systems and massive wealth - forces and dynamics I don't understand or can hardly imagine."
Michael Leunig
Politics Science Alone Me
"The repression of virtuous instinct in the modern world is an incremental tragedy. Repress one instinct, and you repress many; other parts of consciousness go down, also."
Michael Leunig
You World Go Tragedy
"I've learned to respect the whimsical."
Michael Leunig
Respect Learned Whimsical
"There is some suffering that awaits us all."
Michael Leunig
Suffering Us Awaits Some
"Happiness, it's a small thing - just a very little thing."
Michael Leunig
Happiness Just Small Little
"To be a pleasant person, you would at least need to see the point of being a pleasant person, or have it explained to you at some sort of 'finishing school' where you could actually learn the laws of propriety and the skills of appearing well-adapted, easygoing and attractively trouble free. But where do you learn these things? I don't know."
Michael Leunig
You Free Person Trouble
"I see a lot of my children. They're around the house all the time on the farm, you know."
Michael Leunig
You Time Children See
"Sweetheart,' 'darling,' 'luv.' I like these words; they fit me like a comfortable old pullover. I remember them from childhood; that's what innocent little boys were called by cheerful aunties back then, to make them feel welcome and secure in the world."
Michael Leunig
Me World Childhood Welcome
"The world is philosophically booby-trapped; touch an interesting subject, and it just might blow up in your face. Some say it's better not to touch."
Michael Leunig
World Face Better Your
"Democracy just isn't working any more; without sanity at its heart, it is becoming a most unique and fiendish tyranny."
Michael Leunig
Democracy Heart Tyranny Unique
"Murk can be described as an enfeebled fog with a personality disorder; it is more troubled than ethereal, sulking moodily over our lives at the end of the day."
Michael Leunig
Personality Day End Of The Day Fog
"Socialised humanity represses nature and degrades human nature; it takes life and waters it down - probably to control it - diluting existence with water that is lukewarm, sweet and murky."
Michael Leunig
Life Nature Sweet Water
"The expressive body is not literal; it's very primal, and that's what I feel when I make the best of my work. It's coming from a primal place rather than an intellectual place."
Michael Leunig
Best Work Feel Body
"Modern man is probably a more humiliated and depressed creature than he dares to know."
Michael Leunig
Man More Know He
"Emotional stability has not been America's gift to the world."
Michael Leunig
World Gift America Emotional
"Pre-Christmas is very important, and it is stressful, and, you know, even in the biblical story... travelling on the donkey in a stressful environment."
Michael Leunig
You Important Know Donkey
"While the world may feel entitled and have the power to pronounce an individual crazy, are there times when the innocent genius, the insightful individual or just the old grandmother may reasonably declare the world to be mad? Probably, but what hope or happiness would such an individual have?"
Michael Leunig
Hope Happiness World Power
"I don't think I have spiritual beliefs in the structured sense - but I believe in the absolute necessity of spirit and a healthy spiritual life. It grew inside me by itself, which is surely the very nature of spirit, and instinctively I protected and nourished it. I also absorbed spirituality by osmosis."
Michael Leunig
Life Nature Me Believe
"The creative act is also in a small way a suffering act - we start out with our ego, this hope of making this thing whatever it be, but so often it eludes us and it collapses and we kind of regress into this mental suffering, we can't find what we're looking for."
Michael Leunig
Hope Suffering Way Looking
"Wars don't happen on battlefields; they go on happening in people's hearts for generations and generations, and the ecological damage is unfathomably complex and dire."
Michael Leunig
People Go Wars Complex
"I never really understood who the Magi were as a child. What is a Magi? Not a word I would use, but a magpie I could understand."
Michael Leunig
Never Who Understand Child
"In my adolescence, I think I felt very outcast; I felt lonely. I felt great loneliness, and sometimes I wouldn't partake in Christmas, and I would go off and wander in the streets of Melbourne."
Michael Leunig
Great Loneliness Christmas Sometimes
"Sometimes a witticism has no truth behind it."
Michael Leunig
Truth Sometimes Behind
"I had a few ducks as a kid."
Michael Leunig
Ducks Few Kid Had
"Apparently, the pathfinder duck is a psychological archetype in certain cultures."
Michael Leunig
Duck Cultures Certain Apparently
"Muftis and bishops should be like ripe camembert cheeses - a bit on the nose and not for the faint-hearted, but memorable!"
Michael Leunig
Like Memorable Nose Should
"What modern humans need help with is escaping from the despair of politics, commerce and media, escaping from the drabness and oppressiveness of worldly values and seeing through suburban mentality and normal community standards so that they can find some much-needed relief for their wilting souls."
Michael Leunig
Politics Community Media Despair
"Humanity hungers for the uncommon."
Michael Leunig
Humanity Uncommon
"I never had a spirit-breaking, soul-destroying religion drummed into me."
Michael Leunig
Me Religion Never Had

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